Celebration

GAY FEATURE

Reviewed on: April 25, 2006
NSFW.ARMY

Genre:

gay, pre-condom

Director:

uncredited

Cast:

unidentified actors

Length:

60 minutes

Date:

1978?

Extras:

This DVD includes minimal extras. There are previews of three other pre-condom titles, all of which appear to be even worse technical quality than this feature. You will feel like you are watching these previews through a silk stocking or mesh screen. There is also a gallery that cycles through still images from the feature, and a weblink to the studio's website, as well as the usual scene selection menu.

Audio/Video:

The video is presented in full-frame, with a Dolby 2.0 audio track. The quality is frankly, horrific. This definitely looks and sounds like the early "classic" porn that it is, and does not appear to have been cleaned up at all for the DVD release. Colors are terribly washed out, and tones have horrible color tinting. Skin varies from looking green to bright red. Backgrounds are dull and dark, as if you are watching a video on an old TV with a bad color tube. Both the scenes from the pride celebration and the porn scenes suffer from these problems. You feel like you are watching a 10th generation VHS copy recorded at SLP speed. The soundtrack is the typical cheesy 70's porn music like something from an old 'Starsky and Hutch' episode. We half expected the actors to break into a verse from "The Hustle" or "Kung Fu Fighting" at any moment. Both the music and the rest of the audio, however, sounds ultra low-fidelity. You will barely be able to even make out what the actors are saying in their scenes.

Body of Review:

This video is a pre-condom "classic", centered around a general setting of the first annual San Francisco Gay Pride Parade in 1978. The DVD's box art is somewhat misleading, as it features multiple non-sexual historical images from the pride celebration. Nowhere on the box is the feature identified as adult or X-rated, and it would be easy to mistaken this video for a documentary about the pride parade. Hopefully consumers will notice the video is put out by the HIS DVD division of VCA Pictures, and be aware that this is an adult film studio.

Assuming you realize you are getting an old pre-condom XXX feature, you likely know you will be getting a certain body type and dated style of filming that was prevalent in adult videos back in the 1970s, and you probably already expect the video to have a more amateur feel than many of the slick productions we see in porn today. We understand the standards from that period are different, but this video is truly hideous not just from an audio/visual production standpoint, but even in basic "hotness" alone. The actors look nasty, unclean, and sickly with open sores and rashy skin. In our post-AIDS era, this just looks like a big warning sign for why sexual behavior had to change. Any fantasy value from the idea of condomless sex is ruined by these actors who look like they have spent one too many days in a bathhouse or filthy truck stop. Even those into "real men" or nasty, piggy sex will not find titillation from these worn-out actors who don't remotely even look like they are enjoying themselves. This is sex as something to do to pass time, not as anything romantic or passionate.

Scene 1: unidentified twentysomething guy, unidentified thirtysomething guy
Acts Included: oral, kissing, hand-jobs

The video opens with some shots of the "Gay Freedom Day" parade in San Francisco in 1978. As with any historic footage from the era, we are left just laughing at the ideas of style and fashion gay men had back then. We then move to a bedroom where one unidentified almost-cute bushy-haired guy is dressing for the celebration while his friend watches from a nearby chair. Both guys are Caucasian, with the guy getting dressed looking in his early 20s and his friend an older man who looks in his mid-30s. As the younger guy undresses and tries on different outfits, his friend looks on with sexual hunger, and soon the guys are going at it in bed. Both guys are relatively smooth, with just a hint of chest hair, except their crotch areas are untrimmed in the style of the day with tons of overgrown nappy pubic hair. The older guy is very thin and has a nasty-looking open cut on his arm that he really should have bandaged before the filming. The younger guy has weirdly bright red tender-looking nipples that look like someone has been sucking on them way too roughly. What ensues is mostly 69 oral action for about five minutes before the younger guy cums. He then sucks off the older guy with the cum dripping messily all over his mouth, and the scene comes to an end. What bothered us the most during this scene is that the sound during one portion does not sync up with the action on screen- while both guys obviously have cocks in their mouths, you hear them speaking and moaning as if they could really be talking while their mouths are so full. There is one amusing extreme close-up shot of the head of one guy's penis while he is being jacked off, and the pee-hole keeps winking at you as the hand goes up and down. We're pretty sure the producers didn't intend for this to be funny though.

Scene 2: 2 unidentified moustache guys
Acts Included: oral, anal, kissing

The scene starts with two guys in their late-30s at the pride celebration checking each other out. One guy has a classic 70's moustache that reminds us of one of the Village People, and the other has a full thick moustache/beard that looks like he stepped out of the Civil War era. Think Ulysses S. Grant, or more accurately, Rutherford B. Hayes, although we don't know how many of you know what that rather obscure president looked like. We'll just refer to him as Rutherford anyway. The two guys are soon in a bedroom, and we see Rutherford has a big hairy chest and hairy ass, while the other guy is smooth in a non-descript way. Rutherford keeps on his knee-high white cotton socks that again, look oh so 70's now. We can't stop looking at the nasty zits on Rutherford's ass that they keep showing for some reason. The guys make out in that slobbery, spit-filled way that passed for being sexy back then, then give each other head. The oral action is just as slobbery with lots of wet tongues and licking. We're surprised the thick mass of pubic hair on both guys don't get caught in their teeth. The sex scenes are intercut with scenes of the two guys cruising each other at the pride celebration that seem disjointed and out of place. Next, we see Rutherford biting the pillow as he gets fucked by the other guy (without a condom, of course). Rutherford has so much hair back there we are surprised his partner can find the hole. The guy comes all over that hairy ass, then we are taken back to the pride celebration where the two guys from this scene bump into the two guys from the first scene. Rutherford apparently is old friends with the older guy from the first scene, and they go off together.

Scene 3: unidentified moustache guy, unidentified thirtysomething guy
Acts Included: oral, anal

The scene shows the 2 old friends from the end of the last scene now indoors, and since Rutherford didn't cum in the last scene, we guess he is still unsatisfied. He aggressively starts the action, and the two guys take turns sucking each other. The sex isn't very interesting , so we are actually more focused on the tacky 70's wicker furniture in the background. We pay more attention to the guys as we see Rutherford has started getting fucked by his friend, and they go at it from different positions. We see close-up shots of the unsheathed penis going in and out of Rutherford's ass, which is oozing sticky-looking lube all over that hairy butt. Not what we call attractive. The friend pulls out and cums on Rutherford's back, rubbing the semen into the body hair like it was moisturizer or something.

Scene 4: unidentified short blonde guy, D.J.
Acts Included: oral, anal

We are now back at the pride parade, where all four guys bump into two more friends, a really short blonde guy and a really tall dark-haired guy who we'll see again in the fifth scene. The short blonde guy and the "Village People" moustache guy from the second scene go back to the short guy's store to hang out, when an African-American "family man" named D.J. comes in to pick up a present for his wife. The mustached guy leaves, and the customer asks blondie to wrap up the gift. Blondie instead tells D.J. to stick around as he kneels and unzips D.J.'s pants. D.J. protests unconvincingly that he needs to get back to his wife, but starts moaning from the head. We next see D.J. fucking the blonde dude from behind, as he tries to claim that "this is the first time". (Right, we believe him.) For some reason, D.J. keeps his white briefs on the whole time, with his dick sticking out of the fly. The blonde dude then sucks D.J. for awhile (yuck, after that cock has been in his ass with no condom?) before D.J. cums all over blondie's chest.

Scene 5: unidentified short blonde guy, Frederick
Acts Included: oral, anal, kissing, rimming

The short blonde guy apparently didn't get enough action despite being plowed by a big black cock. As D.J. is dressed again and gets ready to leave the store, a tall "guido"-looking pimp-daddy type (complete with big gold cross & chain) walks into the room and introduces himself to D.J. as Frederick, one of the co-owners of the store. D.J. leaves, and blondie is all over Frederick. We assume the two are already lovers? They kiss and blondie sucks Frederick. Blondie is wearing a jock strap, and Frederick turns blondie around and rims him through the jock opening before removing it and fucking him. Frederick cums on blondie's chest, then the video ends with all the actors hand in hand walking through the pride celebration.

Concluding Words:

More than anything else, watching this video made us think of the type of material you might expect to find in rundown adult video arcades or playing on an ancient TV set at the local bathhouse from a videotape that they have been showing continuously for the past two decades. We can't imagine anyone in 2006 being turned on by this regardless of the body type they are into. Our "standards" for porn have gone up so much that this becomes unwatchable from a technical standpoint if nothing else. Gay men have also become far more aware of their physiques and body care, and the guys in this video will simply look dirty, unclean, or emaciated to modern audiences. Splotchy skin, open cuts, and rashes would never cut it in an adult video today. We found the historical footage from the "Gay Freedom Day," as the pride event was known then, to be far more interesting than any of the sex scenes. To see the political signs and banners the marchers were holding up makes us realize how far we have come since then. But if what you are looking for is some good nostalgic pre-condom action, skip this one for sure.